Deregulation and price discrimination in the conveyancing market

Using data from a telephone survey of solicitors in England and Wales, this paper presents data on the impact of deregulation on price discrimination in 27 local conveyancing markets. It is concluded that variations in price discrimination can be explained not only by differences by firm and market structure but also by systematic differences in firm conduct. In particular, the nature of the response within different markets to deregulation in the legal profession (advertising and licensed conveyancers) has a significant effect on the extent of price discrimination.     

Priors from General Equilibrium Models for VARS*

This article uses a simple New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model as a prior for a vector autoregression, and shows that the resulting model is competitive with standard benchmarks in terms of forecasting, and can be used for policy analysis.     

Predictive mean matching imputation of semicontinuous variables

Multiple imputation methods properly account for the uncertainty of missing data. One of those methods for creating multiple imputations is predictive mean matching (PMM), a general purpose method. Little is known about the performance of PMM in imputing non‐normal semicontinuous data (skewed data with a point mass at a certain value and otherwise continuously distributed). We investigate the performance of PMM as well as dedicated methods for imputing semicontinuous data by performing simulation studies under univariate and multivariate missingness mechanisms. We also investigate the performance on real‐life datasets. We conclude that PMM performance is at least as good as the investigated dedicated methods for imputing semicontinuous data and, in contrast to other methods, is the only method that yields plausible imputations and preserves the original data distributions.     

OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance: The role of complexity and coupling

Today, manufacturing firms encounter pressure from multiple stakeholders to manage occupational health and safety issues properly, systematically and transparently. While manufacturing firms commonly use internally developed Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, there is growing pressure to adopt externally certified system such as OHSAS 18001. However, there are conflicting views and little empirical evidence that examines the linkage between OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance. Hence, this paper examines the impact of OHSAS 18001 on operational performance through three theoretical lenses: Institutional Theory, Normal Accident Theory, and High Reliability Theory. We also investigate how complexity and coupling moderate the relationship between OHSAS 18001 and operational performance. Based on a sample of 211 U.S. listed manufacturing firms with OHSAS 18001 certification, we find that certification leads to significant increases in abnormal performance on safety, sales growth, labor productivity, and profitability and that these benefits increase as complexity and coupling increase.     

Information Precision and Long‐Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings

Due to a lack of an information history, IPO firms' information precision is not only generally low but also likely to be estimated initially with considerable error. I hypothesize and find that the deviation between expected and realized information precision is predictably associated with the magnitude and the persistence of long‐run abnormal returns after an IPO. Specifically, an upward (downward) revision of information precision results in positive (negative) abnormal returns over the period in which investors update their beliefs. In addition, the positive abnormal returns of firms with unexpectedly high realized information precision are less persistent than the negative abnormal returns of firms with unexpectedly low realized information precision, which can extend up to 18 months after the IPO. The findings imply that long‐term investors in IPO stocks do not necessarily behave irrationally, but that both positive and negative post‐IPO abnormal performance is also consistent with rational investors gradually updating the perceived information precision parameter of these stocks.     

ON THE GROWTH OF THE AGRICULTURAL FIRM*

Theoretical problems involved in the reconciliation of the assumption of constant returns to scale with determinacy of firm size are discussed with particular reference to Australian farms. Various techniques for examining changes in the size distribution of firms are examined and their use demonstrated. The work is stochastic rather than deterministic. B.A.E. sheep industry survey data is used and flock size is used as the measure of farm size. The results do not suggest that inequality in the distribution of farm sizes is increasing. Growth differs between flock sizes within the same region and for the same flock size between regions. Profitability seems to be relatively larger in the medium flock sizes.     

Pay fairness and intrinsic motivation: the role of pay transparency

The fairness of managerial pay can be judged in terms of its distributive justice properties (‘is my pay fair when compared to others’) and its procedural justice properties (‘is my pay fairly determined’). While both types of justice have been studied extensively in the organizational literature, their relative importance in predicting work-related outcomes is still open to debate. In this paper, we provide field evidence that the relationship between pay justice and managers' intrinsic motivation is moderated by pay transparency, which is the extent to which managers know each other's pay levels. In a homogeneous sample of 139 Slovenian bank managers, we find that procedural justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is low, and that distributive justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is high. These findings that are congruent with fairness heuristic theory (Van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt and Wilke 1997a) suggest the importance of considering pay transparency for understanding and designing fair managerial pay systems.